Pine Island Farm Mission Statement
Pine Island Farm is the neighborhood farm for a diverse community of primarily New American users in the Greater Burlington area. It is intentionally evolving to meet the demand for locally produced and culturally significant foods, as well as provide a locale where people can deepen their relationships with the land, nurture cultural values and traditions, and broaden their community connections. As it seeks to rejuvenate the spirits of all who use it, Pine Island Farm works in harmony with the natural environment, ensuring that both people and place are better for having been a part of this endeavor.
Pine Island Farm is the neighborhood farm for a diverse community of primarily New American users in the Greater Burlington area. It is intentionally evolving to meet the demand for locally produced and culturally significant foods, as well as provide a locale where people can deepen their relationships with the land, nurture cultural values and traditions, and broaden their community connections. As it seeks to rejuvenate the spirits of all who use it, Pine Island Farm works in harmony with the natural environment, ensuring that both people and place are better for having been a part of this endeavor.
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History of Pine Island Community Farm
The Community. Pine Island Community Farm is open to all but focuses its activities on the New American Community in greater Burlington. New Americans refer to people who came to the U.S. as refugees, often after fleeing violence, torture, or ethnic cleansing in their home countries. Most fled to refugee camps in third countries where they end up staying for an average of 15-20 years. International policy is always to get people back to their home countries if possible but when a determination is made that their security cannot be assured, the U.N. seeks to resettle families in a country where they can begin a new life safe from the turmoil they fled. Once refugees have been assigned for resettlement to the U.S., the State Department directs them to states that receive them according to quotas determined annually. Families arriving in the U.S. are eligible to work and receive some limited resettlement support until they become self-sufficient. They can obtain a green card after having been in the U.S. for a year and apply for citizenship five years after that. New Americans in Vermont, most of whom live in the greater Burlington area, come from many different countries. The largest populations come from Vietnam, Bosnia, Bhutan, and Somalia. Other represented countries include Burma, Iraq, Sudan, The Congo, Rwanda and Burundi ... The vast majority of New Americans were farmers or herders before they were brutally dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods. And, nearly all the families in our area share a common preference for goat meat and fresh local food. Which is what led to the idea of a community farm... Starting a Farm. The idea for the farm grew out of discussions with families who were frustrated that they could not easily access goat meat…and especially locally produced meat. Many weekends found them driving to New Hampshire or the Boston area to purchase a goat, often getting lost en route and facing numerous cross-cultural and communications challenges. In addition to the live goats, New American consumers were buying the equivalent of 3,000 goats as frozen meat from the ethnic markets of Burlington and Winooski. ALL of this meat was imported from Australia and New Zealand. Would it not be possible, we wondered, for people to raise goats in and around Burlington to meet this demand? The idea matured and developed into Pine Island Farm, a partnership between VLT (The Vermont Land Trust) and AALV (The Association of Africans Living in Vermont). The Land Trust offered a 230 acre property to the project with a no-cost lease for five years as the project gets established. Located in Colchester, just a few miles from the refugee resettlement communities of Winooski and Burlington, the property has 80 acres of grazing land in the floodplain of the Winooski River, as well as 8 acres of higher ground suitable for vegetable production. (The remaining land includes extensive wetlands and vegetated buffers that will not be used for agriculture, as defined in our lease with VLT.) In 2013, Chuda Dhaurali, a refugee from Bhutan who was resettled in Vermont in 2009, became the project's pilot goat farmer. He raised 80 goats his first season and has now expanded to a herd of roughly 250 goats at any given time. He was joined in 2014 by Theogène Mahoro who is now heading up chicken operations at the farm. In 2015, we added 7 acres of garden plots, which are farmed by about 60 families. The standard plots are 1/8 acre but 3 families are doing commercial gardening on 1/2 acre plots. In 2016 we added a beekeeping component. The farm is now legally constituted as a 501(c)3. We are building our management capacity in order to become a cooperatively managed membership farm with both producer-members (gardeners, chicken raisers, goat herders) and consumer/user-members (buyers of animals, users of the slaughter room, etc.). This strategy will enable the farm to achieve financial independence and long-term sustainability. Pine Island Farm is part of the Burlington area consortium of New Farms for New Americans that includes community garden sites throughout Burlington and Winooski. We are also among the founding members of the Vermont Chevon Meat Network. |
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Thanks to all who have made this project possible
Our key institutional partners, without whom this project could never have gotten off the ground are the Vermont Land Trust and the Association of Africans Living in Vermont. Each brings special skills and knowledge to the partnership, allowing us to connect people and land in ways that are both innovative and profoundly responsive to environmental and social concerns.
Pine Island Farm would not exist without our valued financial partners who have so generously supported the farm vision and the multitude of investments needed to bring the vision to reality. We are deeply grateful to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, who supported us to get the pilot Goat Collaborative off the ground, the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and Vermont Grass Farmers Association, both of whom have contributed to our ecological restoration work, AARP whose Livable Community grant supports our social outreach and elder programs, Vermont's Working Lands Enterprise Initiative and the Vermont Department of Agriculture Best Management Practices Grant that together enabled us to build the community slaughter facility, and Janes Trust, City Market, and The High Meadow Foundation who have provided crucial support as we expanded from the pilot venture toward a sustainable community farm. In 2015, we landed a USDA Community Food Grant that is allowing us to grow the operation and move forward to financial independence. Our gratitude to all of our financial partners is immeasurable.
Money is critical but support from the community and our myriad partners and volunteers is equally essential to bringing our ambitious ideas to fruition. We are grateful to the support of UVM Extension, partnerships with UVM and Saint Michael's Colleges, and mentoring from numerous community members who have served on our advisory board and provided input during project design and implementation. We have learned so much from more seasoned Vermont goat and chicken raisers who are always ready to answer a question by phone or email. And, we cannot possibly express sufficient gratitude to the community volunteers (many of them associated with the City Market member-worker program) who help muck out the barn, clean up and beautify the site, water our willows, paint and repair windows and...and...and...
THANK YOU ALL!
